“Who the heck is Gal Gadot?”Yeah, we got that in more than a few tweets and Facebook messages over the last couple of hours since the news broke that the Fast & Furious 6 actress had been cast as Diana Prince, better known as Wonder Woman, in the forthcoming Batman vs. Superman film.While Henry Cavill was already something of an established personality in the world of genre entertainment when he took on the role of Superman, it didn’t really matter: the relative anonymity he enjoyed among people who hadn’t seen The Tudors was actually considered a big plus for him in many ways, drawing comparisons to Christopher Reeve and Tom Welling, who weren’t recognizable stars before taking on the role of Clark Kent.Ben Affleck, of course, was a two-time Academy Award winner with a lifetime domestic box office take of over $1.5 billion and one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood. A different approach, sure, but all of the big-screen Batman actors since 1989 have been known in their own right before taking on the role of the Dark Knight–even if not all of them were George Clooney (thankfully).It wasn’t quite clear what direction Warner Bros. were going to go with Wonder Woman; it seemed that a recognizable name and face might help sell the movie, especially in a marketplace where studios seem gunshy of opening an expensive, blockbuster movie that revolves around a female lead. Some fans, though, maintained that just like a male superhero, it might benefit the character to be handed off to an actress who didn’t have a lot of baggage so that she could fully inhabit the character without the constant distraction of “Oh, that’s the woman from [insert movie here].”And, of course, there were some people who just had their minds made up. One reader on our Facebook page responded to each new casting rumor by suggesting that the studio should pick Alexandra Daddario of Percy Jackson fame. Others decided long ago that in order for Wonder Woman to be “bad ass” enough, they needed somebody like MMA fighter Gina Carano, who briefly took on the role of media favorite for the role when she started publicly dating Man of Steel star Cavill.So, now that we have a Wonder Woman–someone who nicely walks that line, having starred in a massive global blockbuster but not in a part that necessarily made her a household name–what should you know about her going in? Here’s what stuck out to us:
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